Children in Scotland Magazine Autumn/Winter 2026
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About this issue
Our first themed edition, Issue 10 delves into the digital world and the delicate balance our sector must strike: helping children and young people to make the most of opportunities, while also protecting them from the risks.
Across in-depth interviews, features and analysis, we hear how children and young people, and the adults that support them, are finding their footing in their offline and online lives, covering issues including phone-free learning, online bullying, digital wellbeing and the reading for pleasure crisis.
Arts focus: Drake Music Scotland
Since 2023, Drake Music Scotland’s Digital Orchestra Youth programme has been bridging the gap between school age and adult provision for musicians with additional support needs. Now spanning four regional groups, Emma Lines tells us how creativity and music making is often a place where disabled young people flourish and how the orchestras can offer ambition, confidence, pride and stability to young lives undergoing transition.
Interviews: Phone-free learning
Described as a “breath of fresh air” by one headteacher and welcomed by parents, phone-free learning is reshaping school life in two secondary schools – the first in Scotland to pilot a zero-phone policy. Just over one year after the pilot began, headteachers Craig Downie of Queensferry High School and Neil McCallum of James Gillespie’s High School reflect on how the policy is working in practice, and what it means for pupils, staff and parents.
Resource focus
Paddy Crump is a Digital Rebel and Campaigns Director at FlippGen, a youth-led organisation tackling digital wellbeing and online safety through lived experience. He explains how a new Digital Intelligenz toolkit shows that, far from being a “zombie generation”, GenZ have the knowledge, passion and ambition to help those growing up behind them not just survive a digital world, but thrive in it.
Digital equality
Dr Jeanette D’Arcy of the University of Liverpool explains how, in an environment which makes less and less distinction between online and ‘IRL’, questions of internet access are increasingly vital to the development, health and wellbeing of Scotland’s children and young people.